The National Theatre Radu Stanca Romania and Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu presents ANTISOCIAL

ANTISOCIAL is a detailed examination of the problems that ravage the Romanian educational system. In February 2015, in a provincial town in Romania, at one of the most prestigious high schools in the region, a group of students started a secret group on Facebook. In there, teachers and students were ridiculed and mocked. A teacher infiltrated the group by using a fake profile and discovered the contents. The students were threatened with expulsion. At this point the group had over 800 members. Soon after, most of the memes posted on the group were leaked to the local press. The scandal generated a debate around freedom of expression, privacy on social media, and the rights of students, but it faded shortly after. The school was only interested in covering up the case to save its prestige. Due to media pressure, the charges against students were dropped, but that was also the end of the public debate around the future of an educational system that privileges traditional methodologies and resists innovation.

Two months later, ANTISOCIAL premiered at the National Theatre Radu Stanca Sibiu. It was an immediate response through theatre, an opportunity to reflect on the situation and a way of keeping the issues of the scandal in the public view. How can the condescending power paradigm of the education system be overcome? How might we reinvent the educational system so that it will no longer rely on memorization, rigid curricula and standardized testing? How can we integrate new technologies and social media into the educational process?

ANTISOCIAL is an Active Art* performance combining fictionalized documentary theatre and observational performing techniques that explore new types of theatricality and dramatic structures. ANTISOCIAL is the first part of playwright Bogdan Georgescu's trilogy Howfararewefromthecaveswecamefrom?

Like the New Romania Wave in Cinematography, there's also a New Romanian Wave of Theatre Makers. The artists of the New Waves of Theatre and Cinematography in Romania are brought together by their close examination of the society they're part of, the use of minimal resources, and utilization of critical thinking. Georgescu is one of the most outstanding artists of this new generation. His work focuses mostly on working with marginalized communities such as those evicted from Rahova Uranus, a Roma community are in central Bucharest, Romania; the LGBT community of Chisinau, Moldova; the inmates at the maximum-security prison in Craiova, Romania - issues and situations that are usually being deliberately ignored by authorities. These are brought to public attention and kept in the public eye through his artistic projects. A new type of acting training is required too for this type of theatre, defined by Georgescu as Active Art*, a method structured in his PhD thesis - Community Theatre and Active Art. ANTISOCIAL was co-produced with the Graduate School of Acting of The University of Sibiu Lucian Blaga. The work on the production also marked a training period for the actors / graduate students, in which they chose to be active members of the society they are part of and to offer a critical perspective that's shaped by their work and personal experience.

The play has already been translated into 7 languages. The Romanian production was presented in a 21-city national tour last year, which included of 27 performances, seen by over 8000 spectators. Each performance was followed by a moderated talk back with the audience, a public debate about how the Romanian educational system might be reinvented. The production was awarded numerous awards, including the 2015 Theatre Award by the National Cultural Radio Station.

Performances are:

September 20th - 8 PM - Granoff Center, Brown University - Providence RI;

September 21st - 5 PM - Granoff Center, Brown University - Providence RI;

September 25th - 3 PM - PACE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PERFORMING ARTS - First Floor Studio - 96 Fulton Street (at William St) New York NY (The performance will be followed by a Q&A with the artistic team and the producers.)

September 27th - 7 PM - Shea Theatre, Suffolk County Community College, Selden NY.

(All performances will be presented in Romanian with English subtitles and the access is free).

The National Theatre Radu Stanca (www.tnrs.ro)

The National Theatre Radu Stanca is the tradition continuer for almost five centuries of theater in Sibiu and in the region, along with the International Theatre Festival in Sibiu, succeeded the unique performance to obtain the title of European Capital of Culture Sibiu in 2007 with a repertory of more than 85 different performances, from Greek tragedy to most innovative experiment of the 21st century, The National Theatre Radu Stanca collaborates with leading Romanian and European directors: Silviu Purc?rete, Andrei ?erban, Andriy Zholdak, Kushida Kazuyoshi, Armin Petras, Rodrigo Garcia, Mihai M?niu?iu, Tompa Gábor, Alexandru Dabija, Claire Dancoisne, Charles Muller, Yury Kordonsky, Radu Alexandru Nica, Robert Raponja, Masahiro Yasuda, Eugenio Barba, Gigi C?ciuleanu, Drago? Galgo?iu, Zoltán Balázs ?i Levan Tsuladze. Radu Stanca National Theatre shows were invited to the most important festivals of the world: Edinburgh, Avignon, Brussels, Rome, Tokyo, Seoul, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Naples, Paris, Merida, Liverpool, London, Budapest, Tampere, Poznan, Warsaw, Cologne, Freiburg, Barcelona, Lisbon, Porto, Cairo, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Nitra, Athens, Thessaloniki, Belgrade, Varna, Pécs, Lille, Tel Aviv, Omsk, Chisinau and Sarajevo.

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